Sham Ruins: A User's Guide

In the 18th century, wealthy English gardens began constructing fake Gothic ruins as a fad. Sham Ruins: A User's Guide explores how purposefully broken objects can reveal old truths and invent new ones, using architecture, art, and artifacts such as pre-torn jeans, fake histories, and broken screen apps. It questions what sham ruins ruin and suggests that they impose new meaning where it does not and should not exist, showing how things we think are functioning well are already broken.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 70 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

In the mid-eighteenth century, a novel trend emerged in the gardens of England's affluent elite: the construction of artificial Gothic ruins. These newly built castle towers and walls appeared as though they were already in a state of decay, even on the very day of their inception. Crafted from materials such as stone, plaster, or even canvas, these faux ruins are often viewed as an embarrassing blemish in the annals of English architectural history. Nevertheless, Sham Ruins: A User's Guide expands upon the specific instance of the sham ruin to explore a broader principle: the utilization of purposefully broken objects to reveal both ancient truths and invent new ones. This thesis is developed through the examination of architecture, works by artists such as Ivan Vladislavić, Tom Stoppard, Alain Mabanckou, Aleksei Fedorchenko, Michael Haneke, and Sturtevant, as well as artifacts such as pre-torn jeans, fabricated histories, and broken screen apps. By employing these examples, the book raises a crucial question: what exactly are sham ruins? In other words, if authentic ruins represent the ruins of what they truly are, then sham ruins should be considered the ruins of what they are not. Thus, sham ruins serve as a means of imposing new meaning where such meaning does not and should not exist. They also reveal how things that we perceive as functioning well are, in fact, already broken. Through their deceit, ruse, and embarrassment, sham ruins possess the power to provoke us to think about objects in novel and unintended ways.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032081359